The invention is an intermediate ring seal placed in sliding contact at its upper ring surfaces with a rotatively mounted disc valve in an engine cylinder head. A sealing ring groove machined on the outer perimeter surface of the said ring holds a seal which is fixedly held by a pin in stationary contact with the inner surfaces of the engine cylinder.
In previous designs and proprietary illustrations, the stationary sealing contact has been in the cylinder head. In the present invention a ringed skirt has been placed within the inner diameter of the disc valve gear and extended downward over the outer surfaces of the engine cylinder. The stationary seal of the intermediate ring in the present invention is now at the engine cylinder inside surfaces.
The novelty of the present invention is in the method of sealing the combustion chamber of a rotary disc valve engine between the cylinder head and the engine cylinder. At the cylinder the intermediate ring seal provides a static seal with the engine cylinder by a seal operating within a seal groove machined into the outer surface of the intermediate ring seal. By this description, it can be seen that the intermediate ring seal comprises both dynamic and static sealing characteristics as a sealing interface between the rotating surfaces of the disc valve and stationary sealing surfaces of the engine cylinder.
Dynamic and static sealing between the rotating disc valve and stationary engine cylinder must occur within the limited axial length of the combustion volume. To alleviate this restrictive spatial requirement a skirt extension has been added to the disc valve which extends the axial length of the sealing contact between the dynamic seal and stationary seal without changing the combustion volume which would change the engine compression ratio and alter its performance.
The novelty of the invention is the extension of the axial distance between the dynamic seal and stationary sealing surfaces such that they overlap the interface between the cylinder head and engine cylinder, facilitating engine component manufacture and installation of the cylinder head on the engine cylinder with improved sealing reliability.